


That Big Damn Bakery Fic

by RurouniHime



Category: Inception (2010), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, BAMF Arthur, Brotherhood, Cake Whisperer Tony, Crossover, Crushes, DADT, Depression, Don't copy to another site, Frosting, M/M, Neighbors, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Protective Steve Rogers, Soldiers, Steve and Eames friendship, Suicidal Thoughts, Very vague reference to war atrocities, War Veteran Eames, War Veteran Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22301263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: In which Steve Rogers sets up shop right next to Tony Stark's bakery, employs Eames and Natasha, entertains conspiracy theories about Tony's manager Arthur, and tries to keep the pining to a dull roar. Just about everyone makes an appearance, and I do mean everyone.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception), Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 35
Kudos: 88





	1. Steve owns a restaurant/grill thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, JUST TRUST ME, OKAY.
> 
> Okay. Like, this started out as the cumulative superfic that you just HAVE to contemplate once you've been in multiple fandoms for years and years. But I can see that waiting for it to take a fully cohesive form and just be written already is going to keep it on the draft shelf forever. So I'm just going to leave stuff here when it pops up and it'll be this total mishmash and probably Totally Out Of Control but hopefully also mildly entertaining, and as always, full of my favorite slashy pairings.
> 
> We'll have some Stony, some Arthur/Eames, some Phlint and some Drarry and some Merthur and some Newtmas, and there will be a shout out to Highlander and SPN and CSI and Suits, and maybe even some Sterek (aka the new kid in town) if I can swing it. I'll add tags as it comes up. Call it the homage. Whatever, HERE, HAVE SOME STEVE.

The crash is so loud and so close that Steve fumbles the steel wool onto the floor. He leans toward the window of the restaurant’s kitchen, craning his head in the blessedly cool air, and sees the glitter of shattered glass outside. And the black-hoodied culprit.

“Hey— _Hey!”_

The kid startles like a deer and trips over the bed of peonies on the patio next door, digging a furrow with one sneaker. Steve slams a hand into the south-facing wall, knowing he’ll never make it out there in time. “Eames, out front!”

The door to the restaurant smacks open. An instant later, Eames tears past the kitchen window at full tilt, apron strings flying behind him. “Get back here, I’ll kick your bloody arse!”

Steve vaults the countertop between kitchen and bar, takes the hallway at a sprint, and erupts outside in time to see Eames wheel around the corner of Cowell Avenue, his t-shirt a white flash in the darkness. Steve slows to gape at the broken window, then picks up speed again, thinking about wolves in packs, but by the time he gets to the corner, Eames is already on his way back, scowling.

Back on the bakery’s patio, Natasha stands staring at the glass surrounding her booted feet. She shakes her head once as if to clear the image, hot red curls bobbing. “Holy shit.”

The bakery is still dark inside, that sliver of stillness before the bakers arrive for the day. Steve picks out the rock, bathed in the light from the cake case, and rubs his forehead. “Nat, get the police on the phone, would you?” He sighs. “I’d better call Stark, tell him his place has been vandalized.”

**

True to form, Tony Stark’s manager arrives before Tony does. Arthur parks in the employee lot and crosses the street at a run, his eyes slitting when he sees the damage. And Steve adds to his list ‘keeping an eye on Eames’ while Eames’ eyes follow Arthur around with unapologetic, and frankly worrying, intensity. Arthur hasn’t noticed yet, most likely because he’s too busy noticing his shattered storefront, but Steve can see that Eames isn’t even trying to keep it under wraps tonight.

And Eames has always known exactly what he’s doing.

An officer pulls Arthur aside immediately to answer questions while another one documents the scene. Natasha stands to the side between Steve and Eames, yawning into one tattooed hand. It’s been a fiercely long day; Steve should have been asleep by now. Over on the corner, at the lighted windows of Limbo Donuts, a trio of high-schoolers, dodging curfew for the sweet promise of glazed goodness, watch the goings-on avidly as they munch their—oh god, has Mal already brought out the maple bars? It’s after one AM, then, and no end in sight. 

Because Steve _can’t_ leave until Tony gets here. He just can’t.

Tony pulls up in his Firebird just as Arthur is hanging up with the home renovation store. How he managed to force their compliance at this hour is anyone’s guess, but then, Arthur is a little frightening when he has a goal.

Even for the hour, Tony looks fresh and fit, loose like he’s just getting up rather than ending what has to be a similarly trying day. He’s always in by five AM and doesn’t leave till closing, which is more than a twelve-hour work day. And yet here he is, looking as though he’s just fallen out of a Michelin five star restaurant where he ate foie gras with another stunning entrepreneur, then tipped one hundred fifty percent without even glancing away from his date. Steve lets out a forlorn little sigh.

And then he catches Eames smirking at him, and scowls.

Tony jogs over with his hands in the pockets of a dove grey suit. Which is just… yeah. While Arthur is certainly put together (as always), there's a rushed sense to his outfit, like he dragged himself out of bed and forced things into conformity for long enough to deal with this. Little things: his collar is undone, his cuffs are turned up over his wrists, and he’s missing a tie. Not so with Tony Stark: just looking at that suit will put Steve into debt. And yet it’s so very hard not to look. 

Tony surveys the busted window with a glance and turns to Steve. “Honey, if you wanted me here, you could’ve called. No need to toss rocks.”

“Ha,” Steve says, dry. He finds he’s crossed his arms again; something about Tony practically does it for him, and he really wishes it wouldn’t. “Trust me, I would have broken more than your window.”

Tony looks back at the damage. Arthur’s on the phone again, railing in that chilling, sedate way of his, his hand flicking like a blade. Steve’s seen a lot of things during a lot of tours and—he doesn’t know much about Arthur, but sometimes something about him just screams chain of command.

Of course, it might come from having to deal with Stark all the time.

Tony knocks out a piece of glass with his elbow, then straightens. “Anyone hurt?”

Steve shakes his head. “Heard the crash. Eames chased him down Cowell, but he got away.”

Tony eyes Eames, like most people do when they’ve realized he’s not just extremely canny with a spatula. “I’d run if you were chasing me.”

“That you would,” Eames offers and Tony smirks.

“Next time, send Natasha. Maybe they’ll run the other way.”

“I will stick a fork in your eye, Stark,” Natasha says.

Tony gives her heart-eyes. “I should be so lucky.”

Natasha’s hands clench and Steve takes a prudent step between them. “If you need it,” he starts, about to offer one of the giant chalk menus from inside the restaurant—easy enough to pry off the wall and slap over the gaping hole in the front of the bakery. But just then, Arthur walks over, phone quiet at last. 

“They’re coming by with plywood for the window.”

“Who is, darling?” Eames asks.

“Delivery driver from Home Depot.”

“At this hour? You know, I do think you could rule the world if you gave it half a moment’s effort.”

 _“You_ should be so lucky,” Arthur says, and how does he do that anyway? He wasn’t even near them during that part of the conversation.

Steve glances at Eames, but Eames is just smiling faintly, eyelids sunk low, drowsy. The ends of his tattoo, the one that stretches completely across his shoulders, curl neatly out from under his sleeves, accentuating his biceps. Arthur eyes him silently for a long moment, then goes back to his phone, typing dismissively.

“Well.” Tony shucks his suit jacket and begins unbuttoning his cuffs. “Guess I’ll go get started on the tiered cakes.”

“You should go home and sleep.” Arthur’s tone is as flat as a pancake and Steve feels the distinct urge to laugh: clearly this is just for form’s sake, no actual ground to be gained.

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Tony says cheerfully. He offers a salute and heads in through the space left by the broken window pane.

The rest of them stand there for a moment in the night wind. “Well,” Eames says finally. “Think I _will_ go home and sleep.”

Arthur sticks his hands into his pockets. “Thank you. For your help.”

Steve shrugs. Inside the bakery, a song that most definitely isn’t on the bakery’s daytime playlist filters out from the back. Steve resists turning to look. There’s nothing to see anyway. “No trouble. You’d do the same.”

Arthur’s eyes flick over his face, then dart behind him, presumably to Eames. He nods. “Yeah. I would.”

...  
...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This really happened at the bakery where I used to work and the guys at the neighboring restaurant really did hightail it after the rock-throwers in a most muscled and terrifying fashion. Trust me, those are the neighbors you want.


	2. ...and Tony has minions. Because of course he does.

The plywood-covered window makes the front of the bakery way too dark for Tony’s comfort. Too close to places he doesn’t want to be again, so he strolls into the back instead, to find Ariadne standing on a stool, piping a practice border along the tabletop next to a beast of a cake. She finishes a stretch, flexes both hands one at a time, then leans back in with a frown.

“That the nine AM one?”

“Yep,” she answers without pausing. Already the sides of all four tiers are covered with lacy scrollwork, white on white, and a mound of lilac buttercream roses hugs the cake at random intervals, climbing from bottom to top. The cake is nearly as tall as Ariadne’s torso is long. Abruptly, she drops the bag to her side and gestures him over. She grabs a spatula and scrapes up the frosting she’s just piped with a deft swipe. “Check this out.”

Tony leans over and watches as she proceeds to pipe a cluster of saucy and sensual Lady’s Eardrop flowers onto the table. They’re edgy, ragged, delightfully unfinished-looking.

Tony whistles. “Oh, I _know_ that’s not the way the Institute of Duff taught you.”

Ariadne snorts and hands off the bag, but Tony gestures it back. He picks up the pale yellow instead and starts adding sprigs and tendrils, little flourishes here and there. “Get the blue?”

She rummages around, and then, at his nod, begins highlighting petals and stems, giving the flowers depth, shadow. Tony attacks it with an icy green next, bold and scrolling loops. Within minutes, they have an honest to god bouquet sprawling across the thick wooden tabletop.

Tony steps away, cocking an eyebrow at the prim and perfect wedding cake she’d been working on before. “Huh.”

“Huh?”

“Now that just looks boring.” He tsks and points at the frosting masterpiece instead. “Picture. That’s portfolio-worthy.” 

Ariadne wipes her forehead with her arm. “The Academy never likes my technique.”

“The Academy can suck my fondant.”

“Yum.”

Tony peruses the cake more thoroughly, frowning at the scrolled border as she goes back to piping. It may not have the personality of her tropical flowers, but it matches almost perfectly with the photos the nervous bride-to-be had given them. “Wait, I’m confused. Who’s the apprentice here again?”

She raises one gloved hand, slow and sarcastic. Tony high fives it. “Looking good, kid.”

“Thanks.” Her voice has that faint, distracted quality she gets when she zones in. 

“They insist on picking this one up?”

“Psh, no. Pepper talked them out of it. Clint’s going to drive it over in half an hour and put the real flowers on top.”

“You ever done real flowers?”

That gets her attention and she pauses, peering at him sidelong. “Not outside of class.”

“What’s on your docket?”

Ariadne perks up, but deflates immediately. “Sixteen inch with red fondant for eleven, then that angel cake with the gold luster.”

“Them’s the breaks,” Tony sympathizes. “Next time, you ride along. Be good to see how—What in god’s name, what is that, is that the music from Steve’s again?”

She makes a strange face. “Yeah, not so much.” 

Tony swipes a dollop of whipped cream out of the bowl beside her and heads for the back, bypassing the ovens, which still radiate a steady heat from the morning’s baking. He maneuvers around racks of almond croissants, three types of muffins, and cookies with the glaze still drying, and the godawful noise gets louder and louder until he knows exactly which walk-in it’s coming from.

Darcy, yelling at the top of her lungs. Or as much as she’s capable of, with her voice two registers too deep. “I wear your granddad’s clothes!”

 _“Damn right!”_ Clint’s voice, shouting in answer.

“I look incredible!”

_“Come onnnnn!”_

“I’m in this big ass—”

“BIG ASS COAT!”

“—from that thrift shop down the road!”

Tony opens the door to Walk-in Two in time to hear the horrendous gibbon howl they both let out. Darcy is elbow-deep in a vat of custard, scooping it into a large metal mixing bowl. She waves cheerfully with her spatula, flinging custard onto the wall. “Oops! Hey, boss man.”

 _“That’s not how this song goes!”_ Clint sings from the small freezer section behind her.

“Thing One,” Tony greets Darcy, winning a toothy smile. Her hair is a huge tangled knot at the top of her head, covered by a hairnet but still somehow managing to look like it’s about to burst free like a medusa. “Tone it down, you’re traumatizing the baby decorator.”

Darcy pouts. “Ari loves me more than she loves you.”

“Impossible. Barton!”

“What?” Clint sticks his head out, leaning backward with the load of tubs he’s stacking onto the dolly. His eyes widen and he dumps them down haphazardly, nudging one with his knee to keep it from toppling over. “Hey! Hey, you, wait a sec, I have to show you something.”

Tony waits while Clint topples out of the back of the walk-in, bare forearms red from the chill. He pulls a wad of paper out of his pocket and waves it in Tony’s face. “Guess who’s coming here?”

Tony points down, feigning shock. “To the walk-in?”

Clint smacks him with the papers, then shakes them flat with a flick of his wrist. Darcy crowds in between them, sticking her head over Tony’s shoulder. As soon as she sees the picture, though, she sighs outrageously loudly and goes back to her custard.

 _“Look,”_ Clint says, completely unfazed, ticking the paper with his fingertips and smiling smugly at Tony.

From the glossy page, obviously torn out of a magazine, renowned food critic Philip Coulson smiles sweetly up at him. Dark suit, double striped shirt, perfectly knotted tie, crinkles at the corners of his eyes. In the background is the burgundy backdrop of some restaurant somewhere, the chef standing behind Coulson’s chair and grinning hopefully. It’s a nice picture, full of rich color, warm tones. Very striking. “Eh.”

“Screw you.” Clint pulls the picture close and smiles down at it like it’s a keepsake. “He’s handsome.”

Tony leans into his space and eyes up the page again. “Hairline’s receding.”

“Oh, look. So’s yours.” Clint yanks out one of the hairs above Tony’s ear. 

“Ow!”

Clint smirks. He folds his treasure up and puts it back in his pocket, then grabs the dolly and maneuvers it around Darcy through the walk-in. Tony holds the door open for him, and follows as he pushes his prize back to the work-tables.

“End of the month, man,” Clint calls, giving Ariadne a nod of greeting. Tony wonders how long he’s been in the walk-in anyway. “No way is he missing this place. Probably the reason he’s coming at all.”

“He write you a personal letter? ‘Dear Clint, thanks for being my biggest fan ever, hearts, hearts. I think we should get coffee and then get married—’” He barely catches the handful of pastry dough that flies at his head, and chucks it back. Clint snags it out of the air without looking, already reaching for a pan of sticky buns.

“Seriously, dude, I’m going to bake him something special.” Clint points at him with a serrated knife, then starts cutting the sticky buns apart. He gestures for the caramel bucket. Tony passes it over. “Wait and see. He’s going to give this place the highest rating he’s got.”

Tony nods thoughtfully and rubs his neck with one hand. “Alright.”

Clint looks up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Tony shrugs. “He comes here, you blow his mind.”

The smile Clint gives him is boyish and brilliant. “Won’t let you down.”

“I know.” Tony turns before anything other than general acknowledgement can be gauged from his response, but he feels Clint’s eyes on him, as well as that smile. “And then after that, you can blow something else.”

“Harassment,” Darcy hollers from the walk-in.

...  
...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I just know that Clint and Darcy are bakers because yeah they are, and this whole place really took a turn for the better when Ariadne started apprenticing with Tony. Otherwise it was literally just a sustained frosting fight broken by the occasional customer attempting to purchase a snickerdoodle.
> 
> (The song is, of course, [Thrift Shop](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes) by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.)


	3. Aprons don't scare these two a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEW TRIGGER WARNINGS BECAUSE OF THIS CHAPTER. Please be kind to yourselves, everyone.

It’s strange to say, having lived through a war, but the hardest blow Steve ever took was knocking on Eames’ door in that modest apartment complex and finding his right-hand man—

friend. brother. _family._

—hours away from eating one of his own bullets.

Maybe the blow came down with such strength because Steve had no reason to suspect, no reason to even think along those lines anymore.

He saw it so clearly, standing there with its weight against the door frame, wearing Eames’ face: the blood and gray matter, the slack jaw, the filmed blue eyes. A death’s head grinning and grinning.

He saw, too, that Eames was horrifically sober, and that alone was scary. Steve has heard men contemplate death in voices so slurred by drugs or booze that it’s the emotion that really relays the message, a language most people have forgotten how to translate. He’s seen it shining in blown pupils and smelled it seething around the rabbit-rapid hiss of breath. But in the cruel hungover daylight, most of them don’t go through with it, and most of those barely remember that, for a few moments at least, they embraced the idea of the end.

It’s always when they have stepped into that cell while calm and sober that the embrace is in deadly earnest.

That day, Steve went straight for Eames’ gun. Luckily it wasn’t in the man’s hand, yet. He found it in a box on a shelf in Eames’ closet, but it was already loaded with ten cold rounds, and that, _that…_ Steve shucked the clip out into his palm, emptied it, and threw all ten bullets against Eames’ chest.

Eames barely blinked.

Steve strode to him, pushed the gun into his face side-on, then threw it aside as well, so furious he could barely breathe, like when he’d had asthma attacks as a kid, and so—so fucking scared—

“Soldier!” he snapped. Eames jerked upright, a little color flashing back into his eyes. Steve grabbed his arm and hauled him out of the room, away from the gun and metal smell, feeling tight in the chest and wondering if he wasn’t about to have an episode after all. He shoved Eames down into a chair, his mind mercilessly full of Bucky, damn it all to hell, Bucky, and the things Steve couldn’t _do_ for him anymore, and British-lilted laughter ringing out around a shared cigarette.

 _“Don’t.”_ He jabbed a finger in Eames’ face. “Don’t you dare, Eames. You need help, you call me, you say the word and I will get between you and yourself, but don’t you ever show me what you just showed me back there. Do not do that to me!”

He stopped. If he’d gone on any longer, it would have become begging.

**

Steve stayed for four days, slept in Eames’ bed at his side, and during the daylight hours, Eames told him the most horrible things.

Three months they’d been apart over there: Steve, nearly out anyway, had stayed with his unit while Eames had taken a severance-package in Black Ops gear. Three months that Steve knows he’ll blame himself for to his dying day.

“Don’t.” Eames shook his head. “I volunteered. Remember?”

But Steve should never, ever have let him go.

“I was so damned close,” Eames said as they shared another cigarette, the first Steve had smoked since discharge, on Eames’ tiny balcony. Cars honked on the freeway, and Eames slid the cigarette between Steve’s fingers and watched him draw. “Either a three-month hell or another year’s tour. Which would you have taken?”

The three months, hands down. And then he would have ended up here on the lip of suburbia with a loaded gun, there but for the grace of his former commanding officer.

Eames is a grown man. Was a grown man, when his dwindling outfit was folded into Steve’s equally threadbare unit, a hodgepodge of mismatched soldiers with nowhere else they fit. But Steve should have taken care of him. He regrets ever letting Eames out of his sight.

There are things Steve will never regret about Eames, though. Steve doesn’t regret the kiss he gave Eames when he first found out about him, hard and thorough in a searing dust hole near Kabul. Eames’ expression was dull, his shoulders slumped with a secret he just didn’t want to shoulder anymore. His lips were gritty, dry, startled open and slow to react to Steve when he showed Eames that even though no one in the army was asking or telling, Eames wasn’t alone.

“Got a three-month tour for you,” Steve said, handing the cigarette back. Eames took it with shaky fingers. He looked like he’d been living in dreams.

“Yeah?”

Steve explained, and Eames didn’t say a word as he outlined battle plans, location, strategy and objective. Then Eames turned and fixed Steve with a look so brokenly hopeful that Steve couldn’t un-see it for days.

“Give me three months,” Steve murmured. “You give me three, and then. If you still want to… go home…”

_I’ll let you._

**

Eames gave him three years.

And counting.

...  
...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The kind of bond I envision for Steve and Eames is just... I don't even know, but it's deep and cavernous and beautiful and unspeakable, and they probably wouldn't bat an eyelash making out with each other to shut down a random asshole bigot in the middle of the mall, and they can sit around for whole weekends at a time kicked up on each other's couches reading and not speaking even once, and they will _always_ be there for each other.


End file.
